Daddy's Little Girl

  “I don’t know why I thought you’d be about five feet three,” he said. “You were small for your age when you were young.”

  “I grew quite a bit in high school.”

  “You look like your father, you know. Have you seen him?”

  The question surprised me. “No. And I don’t intend to.” I didn’t want to ask, but I was too curious not to. “Do you see him, Mr. Longo?”

  “Please call me Marcus. I haven’t seen him in years, but his son, your half-brother, is a terrific all-around athlete. Gets lots of press in the local papers. Your father retired from the state troopers eight years ago when he was fifty-nine. There were some very nice write-ups in the local papers about him. He had an impressive career with the state troopers.”

  “I assume Andrea’s death was mentioned?”

  “Yes, and there were quite a few pictures, both recent and from the files. That’s how I can see how much you resemble him now.”

  I didn’t answer, and Longo raised his eyebrows. “Obviously that’s a compliment. Anyhow, as my mother used to say, ‘You grew up nice.’ ” Abruptly he changed the subject. “Ellie, I read your book and liked it a lot. In it you captured the gut-wrenching pain of the victims’ families better than anything I’ve ever read. I understand where that’s coming from.”

  “I guess you do.”

  “Why are you here, Ellie?”

  “I came because I had to protest against Rob West-erfield getting out on parole.”

  “Even though you must have known you were wasting your frequent flier miles,” he said quietly.

  “I knew it was useless.”

  “Do you feel it necessary to be a voice crying out in the wilderness?”

  “My message is not to prepare the way for the Lord. Mine is ‘Beware. You’re uncaging a killer.’ ”

  “It’s still a voice in the wilderness. The doors will open tomorrow morning for Rob Westerfield, and he will walk out of prison. Listen to me carefully now, Ellie. There isn’t the faintest doubt that he’ll get a new trial. Nebels’s testimony will probably be enough to cause reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds, and Westerfield will be acquitted. His record will be expunged, and the Westerfields will live happily ever after.”

  “That can’t happen.”

  “Ellie, you’ve got to understand something: The Westerfields need to make it happen. Robson Parke Westerfield is the last of the line of what used to be a fine and respected name. Don’t be fooled by his father’s public image. Behind that philanthropic facade, Vincent Westerfield, Rob’s father, is a greedy robber baron, but he craves respectability for his son. And old Mrs. Westerfield demands it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that at age ninety-two she is still as sharp as a tack and in control of the family fortune. If Rob’s name isn’t cleared, she’s leaving everything to charity.”

  “Surely Vincent Westerfield has plenty of money in his own right.”

  “Of course. But nothing compared to his mother’s wealth. Mrs. Dorothy Westerfield is a class act, and she no longer has blind faith in her grandson’s innocence. Didn’t your father throw her out of your house the day of the funeral?”

  “Yes, he did. My mother never got over being mortified about that.”

  “Apparently neither did Mrs. Dorothy Westerfield. Your father publicly confronted her with the fact that the guy who robbed and shot her claimed to be in collusion with Rob.”

  “Yes, I remember him shouting that.”

  “And apparently Mrs. Westerfield has remembered it, too. Naturally she has wanted to believe that Rob was wrongly convicted, but I gather the seeds of doubt have always been there and have only grown stronger over the years. Now that she obviously is running out of time, she’s put it to the father. If Rob is innocent, see that he’s vindicated and the stain removed from the family name. Otherwise, her money, the Westerfield fortune, will go to charity.”

  “I’m surprised she has that much discretion over it.”

  “Maybe her husband, Vincent’s father, saw something in his son that caused him to set it up that way. Fortunately for him, he didn’t live to see his grandson convicted of murder.”

  “So the father has to prove Rob’s innocence, and suddenly there’s an eyewitness who saw Paulie Stroebel go into the hideout. Is old Mrs. Westerfield buying that story?”

  “Ellie, what she wants is a new jury to review the case and render the verdict she wants.”

  “And Vincent Westerfield is going to make sure what that verdict is.”

  “Let me tell you about Vincent Westerfield. For years he’s been hell-bent on destroying the character of the Hudson Valley by getting residential areas zoned for business. He’d put a shopping mall in the middle of the Hudson River if he could figure out how to do it. Do you think he cares what happens to Paulie Stroebel?”

  The menus came. I decided on one of the specials, rack of lamb. Marcus ordered salmon.

  Over our salads I told him my plans. “When I saw that interview on television with Will Nebels, I originally decided to try to get some investigative articles published. What I’ve gotten so far is a contract to write a book to refute the one Jake Bern is writing.”

  “They not only have Bern writing a book but they have a publicity machine geared up and ready to blitz the media. What you saw on television was only the beginning,” Longo warned. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they suddenly released a picture of Rob in an Eagle Scout uniform.”

  “I remember my father saying he was rotten through and through. What was the story about the break-in at his grandmother’s home?”

  Marcus had a cop’s memory for crimes. “The grandmother was staying at her house in Oldham. In the middle of the night she heard some kind of noise and woke up. There was a live-in maid, but she was in a separate wing. When Mrs. Westerfield opened the bedroom door, she was shot at point-blank range. She never saw her assailant, but he was arrested a couple of days later. He claimed Rob had put him up to it, said he promised him ten thousand dollars if he finished her off.

  “Needless to say, there was no proof. It was the word of a twenty-one-year-old high school dropout with a long juvenile record against a Westerfield.”

  “What would Rob’s motive have been?”

  “Money. His grandmother was leaving one hundred thousand dollars directly to him. She thought that sixteen wasn’t too young to begin to handle and invest money intelligently. She didn’t know that Rob had a drug problem.”

  “She believed he wasn’t involved in the shooting?”

  “Yes. Nevertheless, she changed her will. That bequest disappeared.”

  “So she may have had her doubts about him even then?”

  Longo nodded. “And that doubt, combined with the doubt about your sister’s murder, has come to a head. In essence she’s telling her son and grandson to put up or shut up.”

  “What about Rob Westerfield’s mother?”

  “Another very nice lady. She spends almost all her time in Florida. She has an interior design business in Palm Beach. Under her maiden name, I might add. She’s very successful. You can look her up on the Internet.”

  “I’ve opened a Website,” I said.

  Longo’s eyebrows raised.

  “It’s the fastest way to spread information. Every day starting with tomorrow and every single day after that I’m going to write about Andrea’s murder and Rob Westerfield’s guilt on my Website. I’m going to follow up every nasty rumor about him and try to verify each one. I’m going to interview his teachers and classmates from his two prep schools and from his freshman year in Willow College. You don’t get thrown out of schools without a reason. It’s a long shot, but I’m going to see if I can trace the locket he gave Andrea.”

  “How well do you remember it?”

  “Now, it’s blurry, of course. But at the trial I described it specifically. I have the trial transcript, so I know exactly what I said then—that it was gold, heart-shaped, and had three blue st
ones in the center, and that the letters R and A were engraved on the back.”

  “I was in court when you described it. I remember thinking that it sounded expensive, but in reality it was probably one of those twenty-five-dollar pieces of junk that you buy from a cart in a shopping mall. They initial them for a couple of bucks.”

  “But you didn’t believe that I actually touched it when I found Andrea’s body in the hideout or that I heard someone breathing near me or that the locket disappeared before the police came?”

  “Ellie, you went from hysteria to shock. You testified that when you knelt down, you slid and fell over Andrea’s body. I don’t think that in the dark, and with what must have been going on in your head, that you could have identified feeling the locket. You said yourself that she always wore it under her blouse or sweater.”

  “She was wearing it that night. I’m certain of it. Why wasn’t it on her when the police came?”

  “A reasonable explanation is that he took it after he killed her. His defense was predicated on his claim that she was just a kid with a crush on him and that he had absolutely no interest in her.”

  “Let’s leave it at that for now,” I said. “I want to talk about something else. Tell me about your brand-new grandchild. He’s the only baby ever born, I assume.”

  “Of course he is.” Marcus Longo seemed as glad as I to change the subject. Dinner was served, and he told me about his family. “Mark’s your age. He’s a lawyer. He married a girl from Colorado and got a job with a firm out there. Loves it. I retired a couple of years ago and had heart surgery last winter. We spend most of the cold months in Florida now and are talking about selling out here and buying a little place around Denver so that we can see the kids without crowding in on them.”

  “Mother and I spent a year or so in Denver.”

  “You’ve been in Atlanta for a while, Ellie. Do you consider that home?”

  “It’s a great city. I have a lot of good friends. I’ve enjoyed my job, but if the paper I work for is sold as rumored, I don’t know that I’ll stay there. Maybe someday I’ll get that nice feeling of putting down roots and being settled. I don’t have it yet. I always feel there is unfinished business. As a kid did you ever go to the movies when you had homework due the next day?”

  “Sure.”

  “You really couldn’t enjoy the movie, could you?”

  “It’s a long time ago, but I guess not.”

  “I have homework to finish before I can enjoy the movie,” I told him.

  * * *

  I HADN’T TURNED a light on before I left, and when we got back to Mrs. Hilmer’s place, the garage apartment looked dark and lonely. Marcus Longo ignored my protests and insisted on walking me upstairs. He stood there while I fished for my key, and then when I inserted it in the lock and stepped inside, he said firmly, “Double-lock the door.”

  “Any special reason?” I asked.

  “Ellie, to quote you, ‘Beware, you’re uncaging a killer.’ ”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then listen to your own voice. I’m not telling you not to go after Westerfield, but I am telling you to be careful.”

  I was home just in time to catch the ten o’clock news. The big story was that Rob Westerfield was being released from prison in the morning and that there would be an interview with the press from the family home in Oldham at noon.

  I wouldn’t miss it for the world, I thought.

  18

  SLEEP DID NOT come easily that night. I would doze and then wake up, knowing that each tick of the clock was bringing Rob Westerfield closer to the moment when he would be released from prison.

  I could not take my mind off him or off the event that had kept him behind bars for twenty-two years. In fact, the closer he came to freedom, the more alive Andrea and Mother were to me. If only . . . if only . . . if only . . .

  Give it up, part of me screamed. Walk away from it. Put it in the past. I know what I’m doing to my life, and it’s not something I want to happen. Somewhere around two o’clock I got up and made a cup of cocoa. I sat by the window as I drank it. The woods that separated our house from old Mrs. Westerfield’s estate extend past the Hilmer property and are still there, her privacy buffer. I could slip through them as Andrea did that night, and on the other side make my way to the garage-hideout.

  Now there is a tall fence defining the several acres around the Westerfield house. I’m sure there is now a security system that would signal an interloper, or a fifteen-year-old kid. At ninety-two, people don’t usually require much sleep. I wondered if Mrs. Westerfield was awake right now, glad to see her flesh and blood released from prison but cringing at the publicity that would accompany it. Her need to clear the family name was as powerful as mine was to see that Paulie Stroebel was not destroyed and that Andrea’s name was not dragged in the dirt.

  She was an innocent, young kid whose head was turned; then her crush on Rob Westerfield became fear, which was why she went to the hideout that night. She was afraid not to meet him when he ordered her to show up.

  Sitting in the predawn hours, my subconscious feeling that she was afraid of him, and that I was afraid of him for her, crystallized in my mind. I could vividly see Andrea as she had been that night, clasping the locket around her neck, choking back tears. She didn’t want to meet him, but she was caught between a rock and a hard place. And so I added another “if only” to the list. If only she had gone to my parents and confessed to them that she had been meeting Rob.

  In that moment we reversed roles, and I became her big sister. I went back to bed and slept fitfully until seven o’clock. I was in front of the television when the media covered Rob Westerfield’s exit from Sing Sing prison in a limousine that met him at the gate. The on-the-spot reporter of the channel I watched emphasized that Rob Westerfield had always sworn he was innocent of the crime.

  At noon I was back in front of the set for the unveiling of Rob Westerfield to the world.

  The interview took place in the library of the family home in Oldham. The sofa on which he sat was placed in front of a wall of leatherbound books, inferring, I assume, his scholarly mind.

  Rob was wearing a tan cashmere jacket, an open-necked sport shirt, dark trousers, and loafers. He was always handsome but had become much more so in his maturity. He had his father’s patrician features and had learned to conceal the condescending sneer that appeared in all of his early pictures. There was the faintest touch of gray in the roots of his dark hair. His hands were clasped in front of him, and he was leaning slightly forward in a relaxed but attentive pose.

  “Good setting,” I said aloud. “The only thing missing is a dog at his feet.” At the sight of him I could feel the bile rising in my throat.

  His interviewer was Corinne Sommers, host of The Real Story, the popular syndicated Friday night program. She did a brief intro: “Just released after twenty-two years in prison . . . always protested his innocence . . . will now fight to have his name cleared . . .”

  Get on with it, I thought.

  “Rob Westerfield, it’s an obvious question, but how does it feel to be a free man?”

  His smile was warm. His dark eyes under wellshaped eyebrows seemed almost amused. “Unbelievable, wonderful. I’m too big to cry, but that’s what I feel like doing. I just go around the house, and it’s so wonderful to be able to do normal things, like going into the kitchen and getting a second cup of coffee.”

  “Then you’ll be staying here for a while?”

  “Absolutely. My father has furnished a wonderful apartment for me near this house, and I want to work with our lawyers to get a speedy retrial.” Now he looked earnestly into the camera. “Corinne, I could have gotten parole two years ago if I’d been willing to say I killed Andrea Cavanaugh and that I regretted that terrible deed.”

  “Weren’t you tempted to do that?”

  “Not for a minute,” he said promptly. “I have always maintained my innocence, and now, thanks to Will Nebels coming f
orward, I may at last have a chance to prove it.”

  You couldn’t admit it, you had too much to lose, I thought. Your grandmother would have disowned you.

  “You went to the movies the night Andrea Cavanaugh was murdered.”

  “Yes, I did. And I stayed until the movie was over at nine thirty. My car was parked at the service station for over two hours. It’s only a twelve-minute drive to my grandmother’s place from the center of town. Paulie Stroebel had access to the car, and he had been following Andrea around. Even her sister admitted that on the stand.”

  “The ticket taker at the theater remembers you buying the ticket.”

  “That’s right. And I had the stub to prove it.”

  “But no one saw you leave the theater at the end of the film?”

  “No one remembers seeing me,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”

  For just an instant I saw a flash of temper under the amiable smile, and I sat up.

  The rest of the interview, however, might have been with a newly returned hostage. “Besides clearing your name, what are you looking forward to doing?”

  “Going to New York. Dining in the restaurants that probably didn’t exist twenty-two years ago. Traveling, eventually. Getting a job.” Now a warm smile from him. “Meeting a special someone. Getting married. Having kids.”

  Getting married. Having kids. All the things Andrea would never do.

  “What are you having for dinner tonight, and who is going to be with you?”

  “Just the four of us—my mother, my father, and my grandmother. We just want to be reunited as a family. I asked for a pretty basic dinner: shrimp cocktail, prime rib, baked potato, broccoli, a salad.”

  How about apple pie? I wondered.

  “And apple pie,” he concluded.

  “And champagne, I imagine.”

  “Definitely.”

  “It seems as though you have pretty definite plans for the future, Rob Westerfield. We wish you luck and hope that in a second trial you can prove your innocence.”